 
COVER
STORY | IN THE NEWS | FOOD | THE HUM | CALENDAR
December 29, 2005
OLD PULPSTER TO PAY: Before "Evergreen"
came on the scene, in January of this waning year, and began
capturing the headlines (unflattering news, often, about emissions
violations and variance requests), there was Stockton Pacific
Enterprises. You remember: SPE was disintegrating financially;
water bills were going to soar if the pulp mill on the Samoa
spit shut down entirely; workers were nervous.
And then there was the investigation, shortly before
Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing Ltd. bought the mill and renamed
it Evergreen Pulp, launched by the Humboldt County District Attorney's
office and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal
Investigation Division into water pollution caused by the mill
under SPE's ownership.
Well, nearly a year later, that investigation has
ended and on Dec. 23 the DA and the North Coast Regional Water
Quality Control Board announced a proposed $125,000 settlement
with SPE. The proposed settlement was filed in Humboldt County
Superior Court by the DA along with the accompanying civil complaint
alleging violations of the Water Code, the Fish and Game Code
and the Health and Safety code. Of the $125,000 settlement, $60,000
would go to the DA's office ($10,000 in penalties for unfair
business practices and $50,000 for environmental education and
enforcement projects) and $60,000 would go to the water board
to pay for future environmental education and restoration. The
remaining $5,000 would go to the North Coast Unified Air Quality
Management District for costs and fees.
Because Stockton Pacific is basically broke and
defunct, the company's former officers and directors are responsible
for the settlement fine, said the DA's office and water board
in a joint news release. So now Evergreen can go back to capturing
those headlines. And it may want to be even more on guard now,
because the investigation seems to have whetted some appetites:
"Teaming up with [DA] Paul Hagen allowed us to make the
most efficient use of our enforcement resources to resolve this
case," said water board executive office Catherine Kuhlman
in the agencies' news release. "We can now fully turn our
attention to ensuring Evergreen follows the law."
POWER OUTAGES : Anyone who wanted
to celebrate the holidays with a nice pint of the Jacob Marley
porter at Six Rivers Brewery last Tuesday or Wednesday walked
away with a bah-humbugging buzzkill and an empty belly, after
a power outage that affected much of McKinleyville forced the
brewery to close for two days. According to Pacific Gas and Electric
spokeswoman Lisa Randle, recent bouts of severe winter weather
and equipment failure caused power outages across the county.
Randle said 4,297 McKinleyville-area customers were without power
after utility poles slipped on the hillside near North Bank Road
and Highway 101 last week. Parts of Blue Lake, Arcata and Eureka
were also without power for a few hours on Tuesday, Dec. 20.
Other PG&E customers in Fortuna (where a city employee downed
a tree into a power line), Garberville and Willow Creek had their
power knocked out on Christmas Day. Willow Creekers were without
power again on Dec. 27 because of a rainstorm, along with customers
in Eureka and Garberville.
BIGFOOT, SOMMELIER? Just as we had begun
to long for some fresh news of Bigfoot, a hiker has produced
footage -- blurry, brief; waddaya expect? -- of an alleged Sasquatch
loping (he seems to be limping, actually) through some grassy
Sonoma County hills, big arms a-swingin'. That's what hiker Mark
Nelson said the video he shot Nov. 11 depicted when he sent it
to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. He said he was
"hiking up a trail off Skaggs Springs Road ... in the mountains
of northern Sonoma County when he noticed this figure moving
away from him," reports the BFRO. "He had his camcorder
in his bag. He pulled it out and ran toward where the figure
stepped off the road."
"We've seen plenty of hoaxed footage over
the years as well," continues the BRFO. "With that
said, we are confident the Sonoma footage is not fake (i.e. not
animation or a man in a costume). This figure is most likely
a real sasquatch -- a survivor of the gigantopithecus line of
apes."
Well, our first thought, over here in Humboldt
County, was, "Ah, Bigfoot's wandering out of his territory."
Our second thought was, "It's the wine, he likes the wine."
But, sadly, our hopes of a genuine Bigfoot story were crushed
upon checking in with the standard killjoys. In one analysis,
long-time Bigfoot researcher John Freitas details his attempts
to get a straight story -- or even a decent interview -- out
of Nelson, who apparently became evasive and his tale contradictory
and deceitful. Freitas also had trouble finding the peak seen
in the footage, and discovered that it looks suspiciously like
a peak in San Luis Obispo.
And then, on his Cryptomundo website, Loren Coleman
nitpicks even further: "Of course," Coleman writes
in his dismissal of the Sonoma footage and the BRFO's acceptance
of it, "if there is any way to prove it is a Bigfoot, just
because the videotape is a Sasquatch does not mean it is a Gigantopithecus."
Sigh. We were so hoping for a Bigfoot, especially
one with refined sensibilities.
SHELTER NEEDED: Maureen Chase of the Eureka
City Schools Homeless Education Project has sent out a plea for
emergency shelter sites to take in the estimated 1,000 people
who "sleep under bridges, and in parks and alleys of our
communities" on these bitter winter nights. Chase says the
Humboldt Housing and Homeless Coalition wants to provide temporary
"extreme weather shelters" throughout the county that
would be open on nights when temperatures drop below freezing.
The HHHC wants community organizations and agencies to offer
any facilities they have for these emergency shelters, which
the HHHC will staff with trained personnel. For more info, or
to offer a facility as an emergency extreme weather shelter,
call 441-2516.
TOP
Bring on the crab
Why you didn't get your Christmas crustaceans this year
by HANK SIMS
On one point, everyone's agreed. There's loads
of plump, delicious Dungeness crab crawling around off the Humboldt
County coast, and they've been ready for weeks, just waiting
for the fleet to sail out, scoop them up and bring them on home.
The question that remains: Why haven't we been
eating them, then?
In the last month, the California Department of
Fish and Game, in consultation with the Pacific States Marine
Fisheries Commission, has twice delayed the traditional December
opening of crab season on the North Coast. Not because the crabs
here aren't ready for harvest, but because a few of the fish
tested in the Del Norte/southern Oregon area were deemed unready.
But why was our season shut down because of problems
up north? For "Cap'n" Zach Rotwein, proprietor of Cap'n
Zach's Crab House in McKinleyville, there's no good reason at
all -- just big money and politics getting in the way of a good
crabbing season.
"This thing just stinks to high hell,"
Rotwein said last week.
The reason? When, earlier this month, the date
was pushed back for the second time, the decision was made on
a conference call to which, according to Rotwein, he and other
small buyers were not invited to participate. According to several
people familiar with the conference in question, though, the
big gorilla of the local industry -- the interstate conglomerate
Pacific Choice Seafoods, which has been at war with crabbers
over pricing for several of the past few years -- did get a full
seat at the table.
According to Rotwein, in years past Pacific Choice
has been willing to accept a small percentage of substandard
crab, figuring that into cost of doing business. But this year,
for whatever reason, the company chose the poor numbers from
a pocket up north to lobby Fish and Game to delay the season.
This, he said, has had a devastating effect on local crab fishermen,
wholesalers and consumers.
"What kind of repercussion did this have on
the industry?" Rotwein asked. "Every crab buyer depends
on Dec. 15 through Dec. 31 to make a living in this fishery.
That's when demand is so high that you can call your price."
While Rotwein and other local markets have been able to import
some crab from the Bay Area, it hardly makes up for the frenzied
abundance of the opening of crab season locally. And it does
nothing at all for local fisherman.
With Christmas come and gone, Rotwein figures that
a good portion of the demand for crab will have gone with it
-- leaving the already strapped local crab industry in even harder
straights.
But Pete Leipzig, executive director of the Eureka-based
Fisherman's Marketing Association, said that while it may be
painful for local crab lovers, delaying the season from was a
reasonable option, given the state of the crab up north.
Leipzig noted that under current rules, the California
coast is divided into zones, with everything from Point Arena
in Mendocino County north to the Oregon border belonging to the
same zone. If regulators decide to delay fishing in one part
of a zone, they have to delay the entirety.
"In California, the Department of Fish and
Game doesn't have the authority to open part of [one zone],"
he said. "No one can say, `OK, open the season from Trinidad
south,' It's all or nothing." And if the prices are poor
in one part of the zone, Leipzig said, that depresses the prices
fishermen will receive up and down the west coast.
The long wait is likely nearing an end. If everything
goes according to plan, Rotwein and other crabbers should be
setting their pots today (Dec. 29), and Humboldt County crab
should be hitting your local market by Saturday -- just in time
for New Years' Eve parties, salvaging just a bit of the holiday
season for crab lovers.
For Rotwein, that's hardly enough. He's asking
people to contact local legislators to make sure that delays
like this don't reoccur.
"Unless the public cries foul, in the next
two or three years you're going to see the same thing happen
again," he said. "If you want to see frozen crab as
a holiday tradition, don't complain."
TOP
COVER
STORY | IN THE NEWS | FOOD | THE HUM | CALENDAR
Comments? Write
a letter!
© Copyright 2005, North Coast Journal,
Inc.
|